Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!clyde.concordia.ca!nstn.ns.ca!news.cs.indiana.edu!att!linac!uwm.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!paperboy!hsdndev!husc6!encore!xenna!elliot From: elliot@xenna.encore.com (Elliot Mednick) Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d Subject: A better EMACS? (or A short Review of Emacs editors) Message-ID: <14061@encore.Encore.COM> Date: 14 Feb 91 19:20:04 GMT Sender: news@Encore.COM Reply-To: elliot@xenna.encore.com Organization: Encore Computer Corp. Lines: 50 Nntp-Posting-Host: xenna.encore.com I have tried all three flavors of Emacs that are available as freeware/shareware: FreeMACS, Micro Emacs, and JOVE. For my needs, however, all three are lacking in some respect that forces me to look elsewhere (Epsilon, perhaps?) unless someone can shed some new light on the subject. Here is a short review: FREEMACS: My favorite (albiet a religious opinion). It has the look-and- feel of GNU Emacs, which I have been using of late on a non-PC (read Engineering Workstation -- no flames, please). It has the ability to display on the mode line where the cursor is within the file without constantly having to type typing C-=. I always like to know where I am in the file. Neither Micro Emacs nor JOVE can do this on the mode line. Everything else (shelling out to DOS, etc) seems to be standard GNU Emacs; it is a superset of the other's functionality (i.e. it can do more than the others). BUT (and this is a big 'but' for me) it can only handle files that are less than 64K. This is a huge restriction and renders it useless for me. However, I would recommend this version over the others to anyone for which this is not a problem. Micro Emacs: I used Micro Emacs for two days. At first I kind of liked it until I loaded in a large (>300k bytes) file, split the window, and loaded a smaller file to edit. After a few edits, the message "OUT OF MEMORY" was displayed in the minibuffer. After that, I could not save the file or do anything else with it but quit. When I did, the legth of the file was zero and all was lost! I could not use undelete (from PC Tools) to resurrect it. So much for Micro Emacs. (To be fair, I know people who prefer this over FreEmacs, but then it become religious again, doesn't it?) JOVE: I now use JOVE as my editor, but grudgingly. It seems to handle arbitrarily large files and I can modify the mode line to get it close to what I am used to. Jove has two problems. The first is that it (apparently) does not have mouse support. I can live with that in the short term, but mice are a part of our lives now:-). Any serious editor should support mice. The other problem is the mode line thing I mentioned before. And the third thing (OK, so I lied about having only two problems!) is, and this may be my imagination, when I compile something from within JOVE, it seems as if the UNedited (old) version of the program that I am editing gets compiled. Even after I saved the program. The documentation also says that C-mode is not finished yet, and I like language modes. Especially when it supports compiling and automatically pointing to source lines with errors, a la TC IDE (I didn't try this with the other Emacsi; does anyone do this?) So, does anyone know if FreEmacs will support large files in the future? I hope this helps anyone looking for an Emacs flavor. __ Elliot Mednick (elliot@encore.com) | This .signature file is undergoing Encore Computer Corp. | remodeling for your convenience. Marlborough, MA. 01752 | Please pardon our appearance.